Notes: Thursday, August 19, 2010

Bl. Mary of the Cross (Mary MacKillop) on voting

In today's Herald:

The soon to be canonised Mary MacKillop wrote in 1903 to the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart before Australia's second federal election when women won the right to vote for the first time. ''Find out who are the members proposed for election and vote for those who are considered most friendly to the Church and Religion,'' she said, before adding a cautionary note.

''Every so-called Catholic is not the best man.''
[http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/traditional-voting-patterns-20100818-12f8z.html?skin=text-only]

On the respective past careers of today's Federal Parliamentarians

Also in today's Herald:

... 97 per cent of today's federal parliamentarians come straight from careers as ''managers, administrators or professionals'', figures from the Parliamentary Library show. ... There is not a single tradesperson among them.
[http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/toffs-replace-tinsmiths-in-parliament-20100818-12f92.html?skin=text-only]

H.H. The Pope's three 'non-negotiables' in public morality

I was reminded of these by the political party fact sheet which The Archdiocese of Sydney's Life, Marriage and Family Centre published in last Sunday's Sydney Catholic Weekly, and I thought that I'd like to keep them for future reference, and bring them to your attention, since they're quite good:

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these the following emerge clearly today:

- protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death;

- recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family - as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage - and its defence from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role;

- the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.

These principles are not truths of faith, even though they receive further light and confirmation from faith; they are inscribed in human nature itself and therefore they are common to all humanity. The Church’s action in promoting them is therefore not confessional in character, but is addressed to all people, prescinding from any religious affiliation they may have. On the contrary, such action is all the more necessary the more these principles are denied or misunderstood, because this constitutes an offence against the truth of the human person, a grave wound inflicted onto justice itself.
[Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Members of the European People's Party on the Occasion of the Study Days on Europe,
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/march/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060330_eu-parliamentarians_en.html]

Fr. Flader on morality and voting (mostly good article) and usury (bad article)

The Rev. Fr. John Flader had a mostly good "Question Time" piece in the Sydney Catholic Weekly two Sundays ago on voting:

http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=59&articleID=7261&class=Features&subclass=Question Time

but unfortunately followed it up with a lamentable one last Sunday on usury:

http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=59&articleID=7278&class=Features&subclass=Question Time

Emily's List: Pro-abortion, of course, but all the way up to and including full term?

A writer to last Sunday's Sydney Catholic Weekly said the following:

To have the financial and political support of Emily’s List, a candidate must support the abortion of a full term baby right up to the moment of birth.

Emily’s List won’t tolerate any restrictions on abortion, even for viable full-term babies.
[http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=2&subclassID=5&articleID=7280&class=Comment&subclass=Letters]

I checked the Emily's List official website, and though, as we know, Emily's List is pro-abortion, I couldn't find out whether this support is unconditional. Could any of my readers provide any evidence for this?

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. John Eudes, Confessor, A.D. 2010

Fr. Flader on the morality of tyrannicide

http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=59&articleID=5789&class=Features&subclass=Question%20Time

In his weekly Question Time column in the Sydney Catholic Weekly yesterday, The Rev. Fr. John Flader dealt with the conditions under which tyrannicide is ethical. Although the first 90% or so of the article seemed to deal with the topic quite well, his concluding remarks contained something rather strange:

Significantly, [the Dominican moral theologian Fr. Germain] Grisez, in giving the criterion to be followed when one is unsure of the morality of a particular course of action, gives the example of Germans “uncertain about the moral permissibility of killing a tyrant, yet convinced that if such killing is permissible, they had an obligation to participate in a plot to assassinate Hitler” (Ibid, p. 287).

Grisez concludes that if such people, although in doubt, thought it more likely to be true that killing Hitler was permissible, they could proceed. All in all, it seems that Hitler’s regime was one where a good case could be made for armed resistance to authority.
[my emphasis]

But isn’t this the error of probablism? Surely one needs to have ascertained beyond reasonable doubt, not merely on the balance of probability, that tyrannicade is the right thing to do before one embarks on that course of action?

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Apostles, A.D. 2009

Cardinal Pell and Fr. Flader on the Kingship of Christ

Cardinal Pell:
http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/STC/2008/20081123_1096.shtml

Fr. Flader:
http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=59&articleID=5128&class=Features&subclass=Question%20Time
http://www.therecord.com.au/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=613&Itemid=30

His Eminence The Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney and Rev. Fr. John Flader have each had a piece on the Kingship of Christ published recently, the former in last Sunday’s Sydney Catholic Weekly and the latter in The Record and The Catholic Weekly from just over a week ago, and I’m afraid that I was deeply disappointed with what both of them had to say. Firstly let us examine Fr. Flader’s article. Father started well, noting that

The Pope [Pius XI] commented that just as the feast of Corpus Christi had been instituted at a time when Eucharistic piety had diminished, and the feast of the Sacred Heart when the severity of Jansenism had made hearts grow cold, so now when the reign of Christ was challenged by anti-clericalism, or secularism, it was opportune to institute a feast of the kingship of Christ.

An example of the anti-clericalism at the time was the regime in Mexico, where numerous Catholics went to their deaths for the faith, crying out “Long live Christ the King!” A good number of them have been beatified and canonised, including Blessed Miguel Pro.

though perhaps His late Grace Msgr. Marcel Lefebvre put it better when he wrote that

When he instituted in 1925 the Feast of Christ the King, Pius XI wanted this liturgical solemnity to affirm clearly and precisely the rights of God and Christ in the social and political order.
(Beginning of Appendix 3, Religious Liberty Questioned)

And Fr. Flader goes on to adduce many Scriptural references supporting the Kingship of Christ. But one of the later paragraphs was, it seems to me, quite inadequate:

So it is clear that Christ is indeed king – but not a king in the human, political sense. He has no palace, no material throne, no army. Christ is king in the spiritual sense. His kingdom is “not of this world”. (Jn 18:36) He reigns in the minds, the wills and the hearts of men.

Now it is true enough that Our Lord is not a King in the usual human sense of the word, but as the Roman Catechism says:

Christ not only as God, but also as man and partaker of our nature, we acknowledge to be a King. Of Him the Angel testified: He shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end.14 This kingdom of Christ is spiritual and eternal, begun on earth but perfected in heaven. He discharges by His admirable Providence the duties of\b King towards His Church, governing and protecting her against the assaults and snares of her enemies, legislating for her and imparting to her not only holiness and righteousness, but also the power and strength to persevere. But although the good and the bad are found within the limits of this kingdom, and thus all men by right belong to it, yet those who in conformity with His commands lead unsullied and innocent lives, experience beyond all others the sovereign goodness and beneficence of our King. Although descended from the most illustrious race of kings, He obtained this kingdom not by hereditary or other human right, but because God bestowed on Him as man all the power, dignity and majesty of which human nature is capable. To Him, therefore, God delivered the government of the whole world, and to this His sovereignty, which has already commenced, all things shall be made fully and entirely subject on the day of judgment.
(http://www.catecheticsonline.com/Trent.php)

So Christ is indeed King in at least one human sense, since He is King in His Sacred Humanity (by virtue of the Hypostatic Union, as Pius XI pointed out in Quas Primus). And as for not being King in a political sense, again, He is not King in the usual political sense; as the Roman Catechism points out:

yet our Lord Himself informed Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world,21 that is to say, had not its origin in this world, which was created and is doomed to perish. In this perishable way power is exercised by kings, emperors, commonwealths, rulers, and all whose titles to the government of states and provinces is founded upon the desire or election of men, or who have intruded themselves, by violent and unjust usurpation, into sovereign power.
(http://www.catecheticsonline.com/Trent4.php)

Furthermore, Our Lord is not King in the usual political sense since He does not reign ‘in person’, as it were, but He does indeed reign through other human persons, since “there is no power but from God: and those that are ordained of God” (Romans 13: 1). As Pius XI himself says in Quas Primas:

he would err basely, who should deprive Christ, the man, of power over all civil affairs, since He has received the most absolute right over created things from the Father, so that all have been placed under His authority … [T]he kingdom of our Redeemer embraces all men, and in this matter We gladly make the words of Our predecessor of immortal memory Our own: "Clearly His power is not only over Catholic peoples, or over those alone who, cleansed by holy baptism, surely belong to the Church, if right is considered, though error of opinion leads them in devious ways, or dissension separates them from charity, but it embraces even those who are reckoned as destitute of Christian faith, so that in all truth all mankind is under the power of Jesus Christ"
(Dz. 2196, http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma22.php)

As for being King in a spiritual sense, clearly this is true as well, but one must bear in mind that Pius XI must not have intended to divorce the spiritual from the temporal, since he defines the common good (the State’s proper end) as follows:

the common good of the temporal order, consists in peace and security, which families and individual citizens enjoy by exercising their rights; and at the same time in the greatest possible abundance of spiritual and temporal things for mortal life, which abundance is to be attained by the effort and consent of all.
(From the encyclical Divini illius magistri,

Dz. 2209, http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma23.php)

As for when Fr. Flader says that Christ “reigns in the minds, the wills and the hearts of men”, clearly this is true enough as far as it goes, but we must not neglect to uphold explicitly the Social Kingship of Christ (a dogma of the Faith), which is, at it were, more than the sum of its parts—it is about Christ reigning not just in individual persons but in persons taken collectively/socially/political, i.e., reigning in the State. As Pius XI himself says in Quas Primas:

Nor is there in this matter any difference among individuals and domestic and civic groups, because men united in society are no less under the power of Christ. Surely the same (Christ) is the source of individual and common salvation: "Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved" [ Acts 4:12 ]; the same Person is the author of prosperity and true happiness for individual citizens and for the state: "For the city is not made happy from one source, and man from another, since the state is nothing else than a harmonious multitude of men."* Therefore, let the rulers of nations not refuse to offer the public service of reverence and obedience to the power of Christ through themselves and through the people, if they truly wish, while preserving their authority to advance and increase the fortunes of their country.
(Dz. 2196, http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma22.php)

And Fr. Flader concludes by quoting from the (presumably Novus Ordo) Preface of Christ the King; but how sad it was that the Feast of Christ the King was, in the New Mass, transferred to the end of the liturgical year in order to downplay the social dimension of Christ’s Reign by emphasising the eschatological dimension, and this social dimension was virtually expunged from the hymn of Vespers in which the social dimension had been affirmed most explicitly (see again Msgr. Lefebvre’s Religious Liberty Questioned, Appendix 3; Mr. Michael Davies deals with the liturgical changes in The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty as well).

Now to Cardinal Pell's article. Now the Catechism of the Council of Trent expounds on three significations of the term ‘Kingdom of God’, namely the Kingdom of Nature, the Kingdom of Grace (the Church) and the Kingdom of Glory (Heaven), and His Eminence does indeed deal with each of these significations, though not in that order. He deals with the Kingdom of Grace when he writes that

We find a beautiful passage from the Apocalypse (or Book of Revelations) on Christ the King who is described as “the faithful witness, the First-born from the dead, the Ruler of the Kings of the earth. He loves us and has washed away our sins with his blood, and made us a line of kings.” (Rev.9:4-6) Christ is King because He can and does forgive our sins provided we repent.

But of course Christ is the King not only of those regenerated in Baptism, but also of all human persons, whether individually or collectively, whether regenerate or unregenerate. Indeed, even if The Son of God had never deigned to assume human flesh and accomplish our redemption, or even if we had been created never to enjoy eternal beatitude (cf. condemned errors in Dz. 1026, 1079, http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma11.php) we would still owe The Son of God the tribute due to Him as King.

Next Cardinal Pell deals with the Kingdom of Nature:

Christians believe the one true God is Trinitarian, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As Son Jesus designed the cosmos and also placed the natural law into the heart of creation, so that human dignity is respected and moral truths are recognised.

Now this is true enough, of course, but there is no mention that it is Christ from Whom all earthly authority comes, that it is Christ Who is the King of all natural institutions, such as the family, society and the State.

Finally His Eminence alludes to the Kingdom of Glory:

And Christ is King because he is to be everyone’s judge on the Last Day, a loving, merciful and just judge, but a judge nonetheless, the Good Shepherd separating the sheep from the goats.

That is probably one of the better parts, since Christ’s Kingship implies His legislative, executive and, indeed, judicial powers. The problem is, though, that together with the following earlier allusion to the Kingdom of Glory:

St. Paul writing to the Corinthians does speak of Christ handing over his Kingdom to God the Father at the end of time. Then there will be no more human sovereignties, authorities or powers. All the evil enemies of the Kingdom of God will be under his feet and even death will be no more.

His Eminence ignores the fact that Christ is King right now and deserves to be recognised as such.

Cardinal Pell’s final sentence is also quite inadequate:

Christ is our brother, servant, redeemer; but also our King.

Also our King? Surely He was our King even before he was our brother (by virtue of the Incarnation, which implies that we are, with Him, descendents of a common ancestor according to the flesh) and Redeemer (by virtue of His Passion).

So what we have here are two influential Churchmen acting in their capacities as teachers of the Faithful who have failed to affirm the dogma of the Social Kingship of Christ. This failure is nothing short of disgraceful.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Bibiana, Virgin and Martyr, 2008 A.D.

Msgr. Elliott and Fr. Flader on Purgatory

[Update: November 10, 2008: the two articles are now available on-line:

Msgr. Elliott's:

http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2008/nov2008p20_2940.html

Fr. Flader's:

http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=59&articleID=5018&class=Features&subclass=Question%20Time]

The Most Rev. Msgr. Peter J. Elliott, Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne, and Rev. Fr. John Flader have both just had articles published on Purgatory, the former in this month’s AD2000 and the latter in last Sunday's Sydney Catholic Weekly. I was not particularly impressed with either of them, since both failed to set Purgatory in the context of God’s Justice; indeed, neither Msgr. Elliott nor Fr. Flader used the word “justice” even once. Instead, both clergymen emphasised purgatory as an expression of Divine Mercy rather than of Divine Justice; Msgr. Elliott wrote that “[y]et even as there is a painful dimension to purification, Purgatory is best understood as the Divine Mercy beyond death”, and that the “fire of purgation is not so much punishment, rather a way of receiving the saving work of Christ, in atonement for the debt set up by the echoing effects of our many sins”, and Fr. Flader wrote that “we should never forget that God, in his infinite mercy, demands much less punishment than our sins deserve. If it were not for his mercy, we would never get out of Purgatory!”

These opinions notwithstanding, Purgatory is a matter primarily of satisfying Divine Justice; usually one thinks of the Divine Mercy as being applied by the gratuitous reduction of the temporal punishment through the granting of an indulgence rather than the soul’s undergoing of that punishment. It is not clear to me that, as Fr. Flader asserts, “[i]f it were not for [God’s] mercy, we would never get out of Purgatory!”, since if one is in Purgatory then one has, presumably, merited eternal life but just has a debt to pay in justice before he can receive his reward; thus it is, as it were, only a matter of time before one gets out of Purgatory. Nor is it clear to me that, as Fr. Flader says, “we should never forget that God, in his infinite mercy, demands much less punishment than our sins deserve”, since one does indeed receive the due punishment, unless favoured with an indulgence. Given that they repented of their sins during their earthly lives and thus avoided the eternal punishment, they owe nonetheless no more and no less than the temporal punishment due to them for their sins.

Furthermore, I found Fr. Flader‘s explanation of the manner in which suffering in Purgatory might be reduced through the Communion of Saints to be inadequate. Father writes that

Just as God, in his power and mercy, answers our prayers for others here on earth by shortening their sufferings, curing their diseases more quickly, healing broken relationships, etc., so he can answer our prayers for the souls in Purgatory by shortening their sufferings.

But it is by suffering vicariously on someone else’s behalf that the suffering of the other one is shortened, not (usually) by a simple reduction in the total amount of suffering owed; someone still has to pay the debt of sin. But this is not altogether clear from what Fr. Flader writes.

It is unfortunate that, in an age in which there is widespread confusion about the meaning of justice, Msgr. Elliott and Fr. Flader did not take this opportunity to make explicit the implications of Divine Justice for this life and the next. And if clergymen fail to emphasise the punitive aspect of Purgatory and ignore Divine Justice, then belief in Hell as one of the Last Things can only weaken, since Hell, with Heaven, signifies the very triumph of justice. Temporal punishment reduces with time but, as Prof. Romano Amerio says in Iota Unum, no amount of time can remove the difference between right and wrong, hence the necessity of eternal punishment.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop, Confessor, 2008 A.D.